


Curiosity

by calathea



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Curiosity is Owen's besetting sin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Miss Pamela

Owen had always been told he had a lot of faults, mostly by his ex-girlfriends. They said was aggressive, sarcastic, and wouldn't take no for an answer, for a start, but all that he just shrugged off as the inevitable reaction of the stupid when they met the truly intelligent. The one flaw he never denied, though he refused to admit it _was_ a flaw, was curiosity – nosiness, as the less enlightened would have it.

Working for Torchwood turned out to be an excellent outlet for all his pent up need to know. For one thing, he got to be one of the few people in the whole city who knew what was _actually_ happening most of the time, which definitely pleased him. For another, he spent his days rummaging around in the workings of the universe. All in all, it suited him perfectly, much more than patching up the accident victims of Cardiff ever had.

The only letdown, really, was his co-workers, Owen thought, surfing idly through the internal CCTV feeds. Not exactly your seething hotbed of gossip and scandal, not like the hospitals he had trained in had been. Take Gwen, for example, he thought, flipping on to the feed that showed her on the main level, apparently working -- Owen tapped a key on his keyboard -- but, yes, actually surfing the Marks &amp; Spencers website. Lovely girl, of course, fucking genius in bed, but that was about all there was to know. Owen made a tiny derisive noise in his throat. Marks &amp; Spencers, for fuck's sake.

Owen squirmed further into his seat, and considered Tosh, also studiously gazing at her computer screen. No real chance she was doing anything interesting under the guise of working, but Owen had a look anyway. He sighed. No, just equations.

Now Tosh had surprised him that one time, he thought. He'd known she was desperate, but desperate enough to shag that thing with the tentacles? If he really thought about it, he could work himself up to being insulted by that, as well as pissed off at her for running around listening in on his thoughts. Not that he'd ever really tried it on with her, but if she was _that_ desperate, well, when had Owen ever refused to help a friend in need?

The video feed switched over to the morgue, and Owen frowned. Suzie, now, she had _really_ been a shock. Not just the serial killer thing, which had been bad enough, but also the daddy issues and the complicated manipulation from beyond the grave. He hadn't expected any of that, though Suzie had always been pretty fucking dark, now he thought about it, even before the glove and the insanity. Too dark for him, at any rate. One night in her bed had been _quite_ enough, thank you very much.

He leaned back in his chair and frowned at the screen.

"Working hard?" Jack said from behind him, and Owen swung his legs down from his desk hastily, smirking when Gwen started frantically clicking at things on her screen in a guilty panic. As if Jack couldn't just check the logs if he wanted to know what size knickers Gwen had been looking at.

"Thinking," Owen said, quirking his eyebrows at Jack.

"Well, think about writing your report about the incident last night in Splott, please," said Jack, and wandered off towards his office. Owen put his feet back up on the desk and watched him go. Jack, of course, was a fucking enigma. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, all the poncing about in vintage clothes and shagging anything sentient was supposed to hide. Most days, Owen thought all that crazy, superficial _bonhomie_ was covering for nothing more sinister than the mid-life crisis of an aging pretty boy. Other times, he got the impression that he and the others had really no fucking clue who or what Jack was.

"Coffee, Owen," said a soft voice by his elbow, and Owen jumped, swivelling suddenly in his chair and forcing Ianto to step back hurriedly, trying to keep his tray full of drinks from spilling.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," said Ianto, expressionless as always. He put Owen's coffee down on the desk, and padded away silently to give Tosh her tea.

Owen settled back in his chair, sipped his coffee and watched. Tosh thanked Ianto absently and waved off his offer of biscuits. Gwen greeted him with a little smile, and took a shortbread.

"Oi!" Owen said, aggrieved. "Why didn't I get a biscuit?"

Ianto turned and politely offered Owen the choice from the tray.

"Nah, don't want one," Owen said, smirking. "Just don't like being left out."

Ianto rolled his eyes, and trotted off again, soft-footed, on his mysterious errands. Owen watched him leave.

A few days ago, he would have said Ianto was the least interesting of the all the uninteresting people in Torchwood III, even after the whole twisted Romeo and Juliet drama he and his undead girlfriend had acted out in the base. (And hadn't that just been the _proof_ of just how dull Ianto was? His creepy metal girlfriend goes berserk and tries to kill everyone, and Ianto still turns up to work the next day in his perfectly neat fucking suit, puts the kettle on, and makes everyone a cup of tea. Not even enough imagination to imagine he might not be _welcome_ any more.) He hadn't wasted more than a couple of minutes of his time wondering what Ianto was hiding under those boring black suits.

Owen flipped through the CCTV channels to find the subject of his thoughts, clipboard in hand, checking the dials on one of the machines down in the vaults. He swung his legs down from his desk. Looking around casually, he tapped a few keys, and sauntered down towards the empty level of the Vault where Ianto was currently busily making notes on his clipboard, though this wouldn't be visible to anyone else since Owen had just turned off the CCTV feed from that level.

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked, and acknowledged silently to himself that his curiosity wouldn't have been roused about Ianto at all if it hadn't been for the incident in the SUV last night.

For some reason, Jack had insisted on dragging Ianto along on the routine trip out to Splott, only to abandon him to watch the car while he and the others checked out an alleged case of spontaneous human combustion. (It wasn't, of course, or at least, it wasn't spontaneous _human_ combustion. Owen hadn't yet identified the species or cause of death of the crispy critter currently gracing his autopsy table.)

By the time Owen had arrived back to the SUV at three in the morning, leaving the rest of the team debriefing the local plods, Ianto had been asleep in back seat, looking innocent and defenceless and… Owen had looked again when Ianto shifted and made a tiny noise as Owen opened the car door. Defenceless maybe, but it had been pretty obvious Ianto hadn't been dreaming about anything _innocent_. Owen had barked out a laugh, and Ianto had opened confused eyes and breathed one husky word: "Jack."

That had been enough to make Owen laugh for real; until Ianto had blushed so hard Owen hadn't been sure there _wouldn't_ be a case of spontaneous human combustion in Splott that night. Just as Owen had got his breath back, the rest of the team had arrived, and Jack had whirled them into action again.

Owen smirked reminiscently, and ducked through a blind spot in the internal surveillance. He knew it was cruel, because it wasn't like Owen himself hadn't woken up before now with his dick in his hand and someone really fucking unlikely still in his mind, but he couldn't resist this chance to wind Ianto up a little, see what the boy was hiding behind the starch and broadcloth.

In the Vault, he crept up behind Ianto, still checking dials and writing in his neat script on the forms he carried around, and ran a light finger along the edge of Ianto's collar, over the short hair at the nape of Ianto's neck.

Ianto jumped about three feet in the air, dropping his clipboard and slamming into the wall as he turned to face his assailant.

"Sorry," said Owen, grinning unrepentantly, "Didn't mean to startle you."

He crowded in a little closer to Ianto, shifting his weight so that Ianto's small evasive movements came to nothing.

"Owen," Ianto began, uncertain. "What are you doing?"

"Thought you might like a little… company," said Owen, suggestively, leaning in and straightening Ianto's tie. "Or do you just dream about it?"

Ianto's jaw dropped. "Owen, I…"

"C'mon," Owen said, "You can tell me. I'm a doctor. Heard it all before. What was he doing in your dream? Sucking you? Fucking you?"

"What?" said Ianto, tomato-red and breathless. "I don't know…"

"Must have been something good," Owen said, delighted by Ianto's reaction. He let a leer curl his lips. "I could see how much you were enjoying it."

Ianto suddenly seemed to grow a pair, and shoved at Owen's shoulder, trying to barge past. Owen pushed him back, caging Ianto between his arms against the wall. "Now, now, no need to be like that. Just tell me, what was it you were dreaming of?"

Closing his eyes, Ianto shrank back against the wall. "Jack," he said, and Owen was suddenly pissed off.

"I know that part," he said, feeling the smirk slide from his face, "Look at me."

"Now this," another voice broke in, "This is probably harassment. And to think you complain about me admiring your ass, Ianto."

Frustrated, Owen spun away from Ianto to face Jack, who was leaning negligently against the wall by the door. "Not harassment if he likes it," he said, hating Jack's raised eyebrow.

"Doesn't look like he likes it from here," said Jack, catching Ianto as he tried to hurry away from both of them. "Is there a problem here I should know about, Ianto?"

Ianto glanced back at Owen, who let his lips stretch in a wolfish grin. "No, sir," he said quietly, picking up his clipboard and leaving the room.

Jack turned to Owen again as Ianto's footsteps died away. "Leave him alone, Owen."

"Oh, please, it was just a bit of fun," said Owen, suddenly furious, "I'm not going to hurt your precious fucking tea boy."

Jack just looked at him steadily. "I mean it, Owen, leave him alone."

"Yeah, whatever," Owen bit out, "Are we done here?"

"The Splott report?" said Jack, in a distant tone after a few moments of silence.

"Preliminary findings finished an hour ago and on your desk," Owen growled, and stomped past Jack towards the stairs.

"Go home then," he heard Jack say behind him. "Tosh and Gwen are leaving too."

Back at his desk, Owen shoved a few things into his bag and threw it over his shoulder. Dull, god, the Torchwood people were so fucking dull. Try to have a little fun, assuage a little natural curiosity about his fellow man, and look what happened: Jack got his knickers in a fucking twist and Owen got lectured like a school-boy.

"Drink?" Gwen said, tilting her head at him in a way that he'd come to understand meant bed, as well as alcohol.

"No," said Owen, still boiling over inside. "No, wait, yes, why the fuck not."

Gwen looked a little confused and hurt, and Owen wanted to slam his fist into something. So fucking boring, all the little dramas the five of them played out every day. Wordlessly, he thumped the button for the lift and jittered impatiently in place waiting for the door to open.

Gwen already had her mouth open to ask what was wrong, he could tell, and he kept tight rein on himself as the lift door closed on the three of them. Alcohol, lots of alcohol, he thought, and sighed.

.* . * . * . * . * .

At his desk, the CCTV feed scrolled onwards, the cameras showing nothing but empty rooms, deserted corridors, the occasional movement in the Weevil-filled Vaults. One camera flickered, the image of two men, passionately intertwined and pressed against the door of Jack' s office, fading suddenly into static.


End file.
